An Elegant, All-Round Musical Performer

FOR Fine balance; good sense of timing; musical performance

AGAINST No built-in DAC; no DSD support

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Its moniker might evoke some Orwellian government department in charge of brainwashing the masses, rather than a class-leading hi-fi component, but despite its rather eerily menacing acronym, the Moon Neo MiND is nothing more sinister than a really good streamer.

It is worth noting that MiND actually stands for ‘MOON intelligent Network Device’. Effectively this means it does everything you’d expect from a streamer – namely that it draws from all the music stored on your mobile devices and NAS drives, plus streaming services via its control app, to collate one whopping great music library accessible in one handy place.

Physically, the MiND seems happy enough in its role, quite content just to blend in to your hi-fi rack. The black chassis is rather featureless, apart from a pair of logos, a trio of control buttons and LEDs to indicate input selection – wi-fi or Bluetooth – and sampling rates on its facing edge, and a modest vent on its top.

There is considerably more to report round the back, with the headline news being its lack of analogue output. So if you’re without a standalone DAC, or don’t have one built into your amplifier, you’ll have to factor that into your budget. To give you an idea of about the premium you’ll really need to factor in, we tested our MiND unit with a Chord 2Qute (£995).

Ironic errors